Springboard

Don't Let Process Engineering Preempt Creativity

With all the recent emphasis around process engineering, it’s easy for companies to fall in the trap of streamlining development efforts without having a compelling idea to rally around. While the focus on process optimization is appropriate, no development effort succeeds if the ideas being developed aren’t compelling to begin with. As Peter Drucker noted, “There is surely nothing quite so useless as doing with great efficiency what should not be done at all.”

So how can you be sure you have big ideas at the outset? Consistent with the principles of lean start-ups, it’s essential to explore all options from a multi-functional mindset, ideally including outside thought leaders who can challenge assumptions and push teams beyond their comfort zone towards truly breakthrough thinking.

SpencerHall’s proprietary Transforum® process is ideal for facilitating this kind of broad exploration in a very time and cost efficient manner. Transforum springboards beyond conventional thinking by combining the expertise of your team with outside creative thought-leaders in a dynamic environment using proprietary, cloud-based Creativeware™. The Transforum process offers several elements that are essential to meaningfully innovative thinking:

VIRTUAL ENGAGEMENT: Physical gatherings do not equate to better ideas. In fact, not everyone thinks or creates at the same rate, or within the same defined boundaries. The Transforum virtual space gives participants freedom to set their own rhythm of creativity over a multi-day session, “logging on” to capitalize on the immediacy of group collaborative energy and to share or build on ideas, or “logging off” to allow time for independent thought and reflection.

JUDGMENT FREE ANONYMITY: Transforum is purposefully designed for user anonymity, freeing them to focus on and react to the power of the idea, and offer perspectives and ideas (perhaps normally outside of their comfort zone) without fear of judgment or repercussion. Since ideas aren’t attributed to any individual, the group has shared ownership in decisions and outcomes.

IDEA CONTINUITY: Transforum’s Creativeware and asynchronous format makes it easy for team members to review idea threads in total to build them out or to spark new thoughts. Our customizable Brainwriting templates ensure ideas are well developed and address key project parameters.

OBJECTIVE IDEA PRIORITIZATION: At the end of the innovation phase Transforum participants rate ideas in private. The results are aggregated to numerically prioritize ideas and share results with the group for decisions on which ideas to move forward.

Please contact SpencerHall to learn how to ensure your lean start up starts with the strongest ideas.